Your First 30 Days as an Apprentice: The Checklist That Prevents Nasty Surprises

You spent the spring sending out applications, the summer chasing them up, and one day in July or August somebody said yes. The Cerfa form is signed, the training centre (CFA) has given its approval, the start date is locked in. Everyone congratulates you and nobody tells you what comes next.

Yet the first thirty days of a work-study placement contain almost everything that matters: the window during which the contract can be terminated freely, the administrative steps whose deadlines run silently in the background, the company health insurance nobody remembers to offer you, the training schedule nobody forwards to your manager, and the first payslip on which a single error can repeat itself twelve months in a row.

This isn't about motivation. It's about having a checklist. Here's ours, week by week, updated for the 2026 intake.

First, understand the clock that's ticking: the 45 days

In an apprenticeship, we don't talk about a "trial period" in the classic permanent-contract sense. Article L. 6222-18 of the French Labour Code provides that the contract may be terminated freely by either party during the first 45 days, consecutive or not, of practical training within the company.

Three elements of that sentence matter, and they are consistently misread:

• 45 days, not 45 calendar days: only days actually spent in the company are counted.
• Consecutive or not: your weeks at the training centre don't count, they pause the tally.
• Practical training: days of absence, leave or sick leave aren't counted either.

The very concrete consequence: if your rhythm is two weeks in the company / two weeks at the training centre, your 45 days won't run out at the end of October but rather in January or February. So you spend a third of your first year under a regime in which termination requires neither grounds nor a heavy procedure — just written notice to the employer or the apprentice, to the training centre and to the skills operator (OPCO).

With a professionalisation contract, the logic is different: ordinary fixed-term or permanent contract law applies, with a trial period calculated on the contract's length (one day per week, capped at two weeks to one month depending on the case).

Worth noting: beyond the 45 days, unilateral termination of an apprenticeship contract becomes far more tightly regulated. The apprentice must go through the consular mediator (chamber of commerce, of trades or of agriculture), while the employer is limited to specific grounds — force majeure, gross misconduct, unfitness for work, permanent exclusion from the training centre.

Week 1: the paperwork, before it goes missing

Your first instinct shouldn't be to impress your manager. It should be to secure your documents, because every paper missing in September becomes a roadblock in January.

The five documents to ask for by day 3

Document	Who provides it	Why it's urgent
Signed copy of Cerfa form 10103	Employer	Proof of contract, essential for the family allowance fund (CAF), the bank, the vocational student card
Training agreement between CFA and company	Training centre	Contains the training cost and the official calendar
Company health insurance notice + enrolment form	HR / employer	Enrolment is compulsory unless exempt; request it in writing
Internal rules and IT policy	Employer	You'll be held accountable for rules you haven't read
Annual work-study calendar	Training centre	Forward it to your manager yourself; nobody else will

That last line deserves a pause. In nine cases out of ten, the operational manager never receives the training-centre schedule. They find out on Monday morning when you're not there. Send it as a PDF during the first week, with the dates highlighted, and offer to share it in the team calendar.

The information and prevention medical check

It must be arranged within two months of hiring for an ordinary employee. For apprentices under 18 and for high-risk positions, the deadline is brought forward to before assignment to the post. This is an employer obligation, not a formality: without it, in the event of an accident, the company's liability is directly engaged. If nobody mentions it after three weeks, chase HR by email — a written trace protects you.

Declaring to the CAF and housing support

If you're moving out of the family home, housing benefit (APL) must be claimed as soon as you move in, via caf.fr: it isn't backdated beyond the month of the application. Also consider the Loca-Pass advance and the Visale guarantee from Action Logement, both free and open to work-study students under 30. Here too, filing deadlines are counted in weeks after the lease is signed.

Week 2: setting up working habits that last twelve months

An apprentice isn't judged on their technical skills in September. Nobody expects you to master an ERP, a chart of accounts or a production line after ten days. You're judged on three things: your reliability, your ability to ask useful questions, and the fact that nobody has to tell you the same thing twice.

The logbook, the most profitable tool of the month

From week two, get into the habit of writing down every task assigned, every procedure explained, every piece of software or contact name. A hardcover notebook sitting on your desk beats an app: it doesn't close on you, you can bring it into a meeting without looking like you're checking your messages, and it will form the backbone of your dissertation when spring comes.

That notebook has a second life: it's your proof of progress. At your first review with your apprenticeship supervisor, walking through three pages of what you've learned completely changes the nature of the conversation.

The question of personal equipment

Many companies provide the hardware but not the everyday accessories. Two purchases come up again and again in feedback from work-study students: a noise-cancelling headset for open-plan offices and video calls from the training centre, and a laptop backpack sturdy enough to survive the back-and-forth between the two sites without exposing a €1,500 machine that isn't yours. If it breaks, you can be held liable where negligence is established.

Week 3: framing the relationship with your apprenticeship supervisor

This is the moment to instigate a conversation that very few apprentices dare to request. It takes thirty minutes and it shapes your whole year.

Three questions are enough:

1. "What will I be assessed on at the end of the year?" — You force your supervisor to spell out explicit expectations. Many have never put them into words.
2. "What regular slot can we block out for a catch-up?" — Every other Friday, twenty minutes, in the calendar. A recurring meeting survives busy periods; an unscheduled good intention doesn't.
3. "Which assignments match the framework of my qualification?" — Get the training centre's course framework out and put it on the table. It exists and it is enforceable: the apprenticeship contract commits the company to giving you activities linked to the qualification you're working towards.

That last question defuses, in advance, 80% of the conflicts that blow up in February, when an apprentice on a small-business management course realises they've spent five months filing documents.

The triangle: training centre – company – apprentice

Your academic contact at the training centre isn't administrative window dressing. They have a legal monitoring role, and they're the one who calls the company when tensions arise. Get their name, direct email and phone number from the very first teaching session. A company visit is in principle scheduled at least once a year: ask for it to be booked early rather than late.

Week 4: the first payslip, line by line

It arrives in late September or early October and it's wrong more often than you'd think. The most common errors: wrong age bracket, wrong contract year, forgotten transport reimbursement, training-centre days deducted as unpaid absence.

Check these six lines

• The percentage of the minimum wage (Smic) applied: it depends on your age and on the contract year, not on your year of study. An apprentice entering the second year of their contract on 1 September moves up a bracket on that date, not on their birthday.
• Moving from one age bracket to the next: the new pay rate applies on the first day of the month following the birthday.
• Time at the training centre: it counts as actual working time and is paid in full. No deduction should appear.
• Transport reimbursement: at least 50% of the season ticket, on production of proof, for all employees — apprentices included.
• Net social income and net pay: in an apprenticeship, pay remains exempt from income tax up to an annual limit of one Smic, but since the funding reform that came into force in 2025, the portion above 50% of the Smic is subject to the CSG and CRDS social levies. Net pay is therefore slightly below gross, contrary to what you'll still read on plenty of forums.
• Health insurance: if a contribution appears without you having signed an enrolment form, ask for the policy notice.

If there's a discrepancy, write to HR with the detailed calculation rather than "I think there's a mistake". A spreadsheet, three lines, the official pay scale attached: the correction usually lands on the following month's payslip, with retroactive adjustment.

Open an "apprenticeship" file right now

Contract, amendments, payslips, calendars, certificates: file everything as you go in a binder with dividers, backed up by a cloud folder. The day you apply for a student loan, a regional grant or a certificate from France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi), you'll save three weeks. The work-study students who struggle at the end of their contract are almost always the ones who kept nothing.

The rights nobody remembers to tell you about

The vocational student card

Issued by the training centre within 30 days of the contract start, it unlocks the same discounts as the standard student card: transport, catering, cinema, housing. It is compulsory for every apprentice and for holders of a professionalisation contract leading to a qualification. If you haven't received it by early November, chase the training centre — it's their responsibility.

Paid leave

You're covered by ordinary law: 2.5 working days per month worked, i.e. 5 weeks a year. The training centre's school holidays are not your annual leave. It's up to you to book your days off with the company, including during teaching weeks if the training centre is closed.

Special case: apprentices under 21 can request an additional 30 working days of unpaid leave, taken cumulatively. And to prepare for their exams, five working days of revision leave are provided for in the month before the exams, with pay maintained — a right that's still little known, set out in Article L. 6222-35 of the Labour Code.

The 35-hour week, for real

An apprentice's working time, including time at the training centre, cannot exceed the statutory working hours applicable in the company. For minors, the ceiling is 8 hours a day and 35 hours a week, with tightly framed exceptions. Overtime worked by an adult apprentice is paid or taken back as time off, just as for any other employee.

The trap of the first three weeks: staying invisible

There's a type of apprentice who fails without ever putting a foot wrong: the one who waits to be given work. Nobody will explicitly hold it against you, but in January, when the interesting assignments are being allocated, you won't be in the loop.

Three habits change the trajectory:

• The Friday update in three lines. A short email to your supervisor: what you've done, what's blocking you, what you're proposing for the following week. Five minutes of writing, a disproportionate effect on how reliable you're perceived to be.
• Lunch with a neighbouring department. One a week for a month. You'll map the company faster than any org chart could.
• Deliberate upskilling. Identify the core tool of your department — advanced Excel, a CRM, an accounting standard, a CAD package — and work on it outside office hours. An Excel reference manual or the standard textbook in your sector, read seriously during your commute, puts you two months ahead of colleagues who don't have a training centre to attend.

Summary: the checklist to tick off

Deadline	Action
Days 1 to 3	Collect the signed Cerfa form, the internal rules, the health insurance notice
Week 1	Forward the training-centre calendar to your manager and the team
Week 1	Ask for the date of the information and prevention medical check
Week 1	File the APL / Visale application if you've moved
Week 2	Start the logbook and the filing system
Week 3	Instigate the framing meeting with your apprenticeship supervisor
Week 3	Identify your training-centre contact and save their details
Week 4	Check the first payslip line by line
Before day 30	Claim the vocational student card
Before day 45 in the company	Take an honest look: is this the right contract?

That last line isn't there by accident. The 45-day window protects the apprentice too. If the assignments have nothing to do with the course framework, if the supervisor is absent, if the atmosphere is frankly bad, it is infinitely better to realise it in November — when places are still opening up and delayed intakes exist — than in March, when termination becomes a formal procedure and the academic calendar has closed.

Where to check the information

For the reference texts and official pay scales, go to the source rather than to forums:

• service-public.fr and Légifrance for the Labour Code (Articles L. 6222-18, L. 6222-35, L. 6223-5 and following);
• travail-emploi.gouv.fr for the apprenticeship handbook and the up-to-date pay scale;
• URSSAF for the social security regime and the exemptions applicable to apprentices;
• Action Logement and caf.fr for housing and mobility support;
• your OPCO and your CFA for anything to do with funding and academic monitoring.

A well-prepared month doesn't guarantee a good year. But a badly prepared month pretty much guarantees complicated months ahead: documents you can't find, a salary error repeated over and over, a phantom supervisor, off-topic assignments. Thirty days of methodical attention is the best return on investment of your entire apprenticeship.

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